Good morning. For those of you who we haven’t met yet, my name is Jarred and my wife Shelley just read our Scripture passages for us. We are long time members of OGC, since I was in seminary at RTS over a decade ago now. We now live in Singapore and we serve at the East Asia School of Theology. Shelley serves with our Partners in Ministry program, and I am a prof in the theology department, what we call the systematic theology department here in the US. And we do what we do in order to help train leaders for the global church throughout Asia, many of them in areas of the world where Christianity is growing, for some in areas where they minister in fields that are very difficult, and for many of them in areas where churches are experiencing tremendous hardship in terms of pressure and persecution. 

The past couple of weeks we have been going through a series on OGC’s vision. So a couple of weeks ago, Jim spoke from Ephesians 4 on growing in Christ. Then last week, he spoke from Jeremiah 29 on blessing our city. And this week, I am going speak on the last of the three parts of the church’s vision, send to the world.

Now, I’ll be speaking from several passages this morning. This is not how I usually preach, I usually prefer to exposit one passage, but this week I am doing something a little differently. On our way down to Orlando from North Carolina, we stopped for a stretch break at a rest stop in South Carolina, and I did something that I hadn’t done for years. In the welcome center, I took a South Carolina road map. Now at this point my wife and I had switched and she took on the driving for a little while, and we had Google maps on giving us directions, as much as you need that driving down, just stay on 95. But I unfolded this road map of South Carolina, and for those of you who don’t know life before smart phones and GPS, these maps are huge. I unfolded it and started looking, and I thought, wow, I get the entire picture here. I mean every exit is marked, you can see where the rest stops are, and you can see where you are ultimately going. Now the map can’t tell me if there is an accident, how to best re-route if necessary that GPS can do, but it does give me the entire picture. And if I connected that map to a Georgia and Florida map, I’d be able to see it all, right up to where we were going to end up. And I realized, the GPS does a good job of letting me see where I’m at, but the map gives me the bigger picture of where I’m going, how I’m going to get there, where things are in relation to each other, it’s all right there. 

You see, when we talk about being a church that sends to the world, it is important that we have a map. And the Canon of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, gives us as a church that map. It tells us not just where we are, but where we’ve come from, and where we’re going. It allows us to see all of it. And the reason that is so important is because the map of Scripture is a map that points us to the nations, the unreached throughout the world. And that is not just us at OGC, that is every church that has ever existed, currently exists, and ever will exist. We all have the same road map with the same destination, that destination involves the entirety of the created order including people from every tongue tribe and nation. And what I’ve done this morning is chosen a few verses that we are going to discuss, and these verses are like major points on the road that we are traveling, they are not the only points, I could have chosen more passages, but these are a few that will help us to see why it is important that OGC view itself as a sending church. 

And to put it simply, OGC is a sending church because Scripture teaches that there are no churches that are not called to send to the world. There are no churches that are not called to send to the world. 

Ok, let’s dig in in Genesis 1:26. These verses, Genesis 1:26–28 are often called the Cultural Mandate. God creates humans in his own image, the only ones of all creation who image God. Now there is a lot of theological debate over what it means to image God, but I believe that at least part of it is imaging God’s rule, his kingly rule. This does not mean supplanting God’s rule, God is established as the unquestionable king of creation in Genesis 1. But rather it means that humanity is to reflect God’s image by being a sort of sub-regent, a sub-ruler. Now, we must ask, a sub ruler over what? And the Cultural Mandate tells us, “have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Now, that word “dominion” gets a bad name, a better way to explain it is with another biblical imagery of stewardship. In other words, humans were designed to steward the whole of God’s creation for God’s glory. But the Cultural Mandate doesn’t stop there, it gives us the “how” as well. God says to Adam and Eve, “be fruitful and multiply.” In other words, God doesn’t want just 2 image bearers, he wants many image bearers, a worldwide community of image bearers all doing the work of stewarding God’s creation for God’s glory. And how are they to do it? “Fill the earth and subdue it.” In other words, the job is to spread out so you have image bearers all over the world glorifying God. If we keep reading in Genesis 2, we get more detail on this, specifically from Eden, humanity is to take the glory of God so prevalent in Eden and spread it to the ends of the earth as the waters cover the seas. And this is going to involve human development, it is going to involve cultural development to an end point to where all of God’s creation, which is here in Genesis 1 in a nascent seed form, will bloom to its fullness as his image bearers steward it for his glory. That’s the mission from the beginning. The scope is the entirety of creation, the end point is creation reaches its full potential. The method is by multiplying into a community of image bearers who are on mission for God. Note this movement because we’ll see it again, from individual to community, a community on mission.

But what happens? Well you don’t have to go far to Genesis 3 to find out that mankind decides that rather than stewarding God’s creation according to God’s will and God’s ways, they will go about doing it their own way. That rather than being satisfied in their honored position of stewardship, they could take the reigns from God and operate as kings themselves apart from God. And here we see the mission of God seemingly fall apart. Mankind still bears God’s image, but mankind bears God’s image in directions that are opposite of the ways that God designed. However, the good news is that in the story of Scripture, God’s mission is never off. Neither Satan nor mankind can thwart God in his mission. And that is the direction that the Scriptures take us from there. 

Which takes us to our next point in Genesis 11, the tower of Babel. Verse 4 (read Gen 11:4). Note what humanity doesn’t want to do. They don’t want to… go. They don’t want to fill the earth. They want to stay in one spot on the plains of Shinar and sort of rebuild for themselves a false version of Eden. Sure it displays the best of human skill and development, sure it is an effort to establish rule, but all of this is obviously opposite of what God wants. They seek rule for themselves and glory for themselves, not for the Lord. But… God’s mission is never off in Scripture. So what happens, God confuses their language, and then (read Gen 11:8–9). Humans sinfully refuse to take part in God’s mission to fill the earth, so God disperses them, but there is a problem. The problem is that the nations are still sinful, idolatrous nations who work opposite of God’s intention for them. They have filled the earth, but they aren’t going to steward it because of the curse of sin. And it is no consequence that Genesis 11 serves as an entry point to what happens next.

Genesis 12. God calls Abram. (Read Gen 12:1). So Abram is to go to a place. In verse 5 we find out that this place is the land of Canaan. And what will happen there? (Read Gen 12:2–3). Note there is a pattern here. Abram, or as he would be known Abraham, is put in a place, the land of Canaan, as an individual. Where else have we seen an individual put in a place? Adam is put in Eden. From that individual, God is going to make him into a great nation. Individual to community. Be fruitful and multiply. And from that place, that community is going to do what? Bless the other nations. Call the other nations to worship God for the purpose of what? For the purpose of mission. You have an individual that is multiply into a community that is to bless the nations so that the glory of God that would be so apparent in the land would spread to the ends of the earth as the waters cover the seas. But here is the thing. Unlike Adam, God doesn’t tell Abraham to multiply and bless the nations. He just tells Abraham that he is going to do it through Abraham. You think that Satan and his deceitfulness and the curse of mankind would make the map useless, mission off. But God, through Abraham, says “game on.” The game is never off.  

Ok, let’s keep moving. We’re going to turn to Exodus, our next stopping point. When Genesis finishes, Abraham’s offspring number 70. When Exodus opens, Moses tells us that the Israelites in the hundreds of years in Egypt have been, and listen to these words, fruitful, and increased greatly; they multiplied… this is direct language from Genesis 1 and the Cultural Mandate here, so that the land was filled with them. Only, the land that was filled with them was not Canaan, but Egypt where they are now being held captive. Abraham, and individual, has multiplied into a community, a nation. But this nation is not where it is supposed to be. And so what does God do? Through Moses, God leads the Israelites out of Egypt and they cross the Red Sea on dry land. This is the redemptive act of the Old Testament. God saves, keep in mind because this is important, not a people, but a community that has their identity in a person—the children of Abraham. And God brings them into the wilderness between Egypt and Canaan to the foot of Mount Sinai where he is going to give them the law. And that brings us to our next passage, Exodus 19. And it is here, before God gives Israel the law, the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 and the rest of the law—how they are to live as a people—that he first gives them their identity, who he has called them to be. (Read Exo 19:4–6). God is about to put the people into the land to make them a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. A kingdom of priests to who? Holy for what purpose? A kingdom of priests to the nations. Israel, through its obedience to God’s ways and its life in the land, is to be a nation that draws the nations to itself. Israel is saved, redeemed out of bondage in Egypt, for mission. This is what the prophets confirm. Isaiah 49:6, God says that he will restore Israel to the land, why? I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach the end of the earth. Israel exists, Israel is redeemed, Israel are God’s chosen people. The Old Testament confirms this over and over and over. And yet, if we stop it there, we miss out on what God is doing. We cut the map off and don’t see the destination. Israel is saved… for mission to the nations. They exist as a kingdom of priests to mediate God’s blessing to the nations, that those nations might worship the one true God, turn from their wicked ways, and then join on mission until the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the seas. Mission is at the heart of the Old Testament, it is at the heart of Israel’s existence, it is at the heart of the law and the prophets. 

Well, you don’t have to read far in the Old Testament to find that Israel fails at the purpose for which they are redeemed and put in the land. They do not live according to God’s ways set forth in the law and they turn to worship other gods. So, with Israel, does God’s mission fail? Absolutely not. God’s mission goes forth, and God’s mission will be fulfilled. And God’s mission will be fulfilled through Adam, and God’s mission will be fulfilled through Israel. Let’s move to the New Testament, Galatians 4:4, Paul sums it up. But when the fulness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman—there is Adam and Eve, born under the law—there is Israel, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons. From Adam to Abraham, Abraham to Israel, Israel to Christ himself, the second Adam, the true Abraham, the true Israel. Now, in the Reformed world, we like to talk about the Old Testament pointing to Christ, the Scriptures centering on Christ. And this is absolutely true. But what we often miss out is that the way that Christ fulfills Adam’s purpose and the way Christ fulfills Israel’s purpose is by fulfilling Adam and Israel’s mission. Jesus is the one who sinlessly walks the path of Israel, and of all mankind. God himself fulfills the mission of God by becoming man, by sinlessly enduring the curse of sin both in his life and the all the way to the endpoint of that curse in his death for us in order to save us. He is Resurrected as the firstfruits of what is to come, and what is to come is the final fulfillment of that mission.

But it doesn’t stop there because Jesus’s Resurrection is not just his own re-birth from death, but rather just like Adam was supposed to, just like Abraham’s offspring Israel were supposed to, the Resurrection of the dead and the undoing of the curse mean that Jesus is multiplying. To use language that Jesus uses in John 15, Jesus is putting branches on the vine from every tongue, tribe, and nation. He, the head of creation at the beginning and the head of recreation at his Resurrection is creating for himself a people, not of one ethnicity, but of every tongue tribe and nation. But he doesn’t just save them to save them. 

Matthew 28:18 (Read the Great Commission Matt 28:18–20)- make disciples of all nations, be fruitful and multiply, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, make them my people, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, to have dominion for me, the one to whom all authority has been given. This is what Peter gets at in 1 Peter 2:9- speaking to predominately gentile churches in gentile regions—listen to the language, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.” Peter echoes Exodus 19 here talking about the church. The church is God’s treasured and chosen people, but the verse doesn’t stop there. Why? “That you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Called, redeemed, saved, gathered… for mission. The church is the people of God, they are the redeemed people of God, but it doesn’t stop there, because the church is the redeemed people of God called into mission of God, one mission from creation to recreation, to the end, when all is finally fulfilled. 

Revelation 21:22 (Read Rev 21:22–27). The end is a picture of mission fulfilled, not a mission that began with the fall of man, but the mission that God has set forth from creation, the mission for which he created it all, and the mission for which he put man in the center of it all. Not individuals, but a people. Not a mono-ethnic people, but a multi-ethnic people, the nations all living in worship of the Lord as image bearers of God. Beginning to end. 

Now, we’ve gone on a journey through the Scriptures. Let’s bring this home to us today here at OGC. I want to draw some applications this morning for us. I have a few, and I’m going to go through them sort of in a list format and explain them as I go.

1. Read mission out of the Bible. Because the Bible is telling one story from Genesis to Revelation, and key to that story is God’s mission in the world, when you read Scripture, do not miss the missional emphasis of what the Bible is doing. Often times we can easily have a truncated view of a passage study, or a book study because we don’t take it to its widest point of where the passage or book fits into the overall biblical story. For OGC’s particular theological bend, we often tell the story in terms of covenant, which I agree is a good way to tell it… SO LONG as you recognize that the reason for continuity between old and new covenants, the connecting point, is missional in nature. When you read the Scriptures, look for the nations, look for missions.
   
   
2. Your salvation is ultimately for a purpose that is bigger than you. Now I recognize that this might be somewhat different from what we are used to hearing. But here me out. Your Father in heaven loves you deeply, he wants to call you into relationship with him. But here in the West especially, and especially in America, everything is made to center around the individual. As a result we tend to center our faith around… me. 

My first year in the field in East Asia, I spent time sharing the gospel with a college freshman. His friends had become Christians and had introduced him to me, and together we went through a Bible study. At the end of each week, I would present the gospel to him and ask if he wanted to become a Christian. Well, about 3 weeks in, at the end of the study, I presented the gospel, and he told me “I’ve been thinking about this. And I’ve talked to my friends about it, and I’ve decided that I want to join you.” And I’ll never forget my response. I told him, “I’m not inviting you to join something. I’m inviting you into a personal relationship.” I was focused solely on the individual. I asked him to rethink his decision to become a Christian. Now, he did end up becoming a Christian, but as I look back on that, I realize that he was actually on to something. When we are saved, we are joining something—the community of the saved. Or as my friend Mike Glodo says, if you’re united to Christ, you’re also just as united to everyone else who is united to Christ. The union creates a communion.

Now again, let me couch this and hedge this well—when you are saved you are called into a personal relationship with the triune God. But if that is where it ends—and this is where we have an entire industry of publishing houses and contemporary praise music that tell us that the end of our salvation is me—if your faith ends there, you’ve cut it short from what it is intended to be in the Scriptures. Individual salvation is for the purpose of kingdom—read communal salvation, the thrust of salvation in the Scriptures is the community of faith, a house, a temple, a body, Paul throws every image that he can at us to get this across. It is first Israel in the OT, meant to become Israel and the nations along with it, and now in the New Testament through Christ that work has started to be fulfilled in us, the church made of Jew and Gentile and will end with the entirety of Creation redeemed, renewed, and fulfilled. When we make the sum of our faith about a vertical relationship and it ends there, without seeing ourselves as being brought into a family/house/body/temple, we miss what Scripture is doing.

1. Building upon that, and this is an aside, but if you are a Christian in here today and are not a member of a church, whether it is this church or another, join a church. Commit. You are saved into a body. You are saved in order that you would grow through that body. You are united to Christ, and therefore you are united to all those who are united to Christ. All branches on one vine. The image is not of a bunch of branches, the image is of a fruitful vine. To separate yourself as an independent, to detach yourself from the commitments that come from the love, from the discipline, from the accountability that comes from being a member of a church body is to seek to live out the Christian life in a way that is contrary to Scripture.
   
   Now, I told you about my first year on the field, let me tell you about my last year doing campus ministry in East Asia. That year, we decided to change up our methodology to match what our local staff were doing. Rather than meeting with students individually, we began inviting students to our Friday night meeting. This was a Christian meeting, but we began just welcoming in non-Christians. At that meeting, they would hear the gospel presented, but it was in the context of the community of believers. And then, the Christian students would invite them to come to church on Sunday with them and get them plugged into the church. That last year, we saw more people come to faith, more people grow in their faith, and more people stay committed after we left than we had ever seen before. Plugging them into the local church made all the difference. It didn’t get in the way of our ministry as a parachurch organization, it actually enhanced our ministry not only because we were not just doing something that was culturally more Asian and less American—drawing people into community—but because we were going with the flow of Scripture. We grow in the context of community. Mission goes forth when communities of faith are established and planted.
   
   Now I recognize that there may be some of you that are very reticent about this. Because of past hurts, maybe this church or other churches have wounded you deeply, and that makes you cautious, I am not saying go into things blind. By all means, talk to pastors, talk to elders, talk to safe friends or community group members about those hurts. Be honest with those and how they might make you reticent to jump back into church membership. It feels risky. I don’t want to in any way belittle that. But as you seek to figure out that hurt, I would encourage you to beware of making the past hurt an identity marker that means you aren’t supposed to be in a church, that you can just be an independent agent, or that you get a pass on that. 
   
   
2. Mission is not an option for the church. The church exists for the purpose of mission. From Adam to Abraham, from Abraham to Israel, from Israel to the church, there is one mission of God that he is fulfilling through his people. There should be no church over here that is very missional, or a church that is focused on mission, as if mission and church can be separated. There are churches with property and churches without property. There are churches that operate in one language and churches that operate in another language. There are low church churches without a structured liturgy and high church churches with all the smells and bells. These things differentiate churches. There is no missional church and non-missional church. Every church by nature of being a body of Christ-followers is for the nations because in the Scripture mission to the world and church are never meant to be separated. The church is by its very nature outward facing. To describe a church as missional is like describing a duck as winged. Now, let me clarify one thing with this- you are not saved by doing the mission of the church. I’m not talking about a works-based salvation here. We are saved by God’s grace through faith. But I am talking about being saved for doing mission, for the world. I’m also not saying that everyone needs to pack their bags and move overseas. That is not for everyone. Frankly, the going itself is for a few weirdos in the church, and I say that as one of those married to one of those. But that does not excuse you from ministry to the nations. Whether that is ministering to the nations coming here to America (shout out to my brother Andy Huffman), or giving, praying, bringing the nations into your family worship, seeing your children as sent ones, be a part of the body of Christ which is always outward facing.
   
   
3. What about the ministry inside the church? Am I pitting the church’s inward facing ministries against the church’s outward facing mission? For elders and church officers, your purpose is to shepherd the flock, but to shepherd the flock for the sake of mission. Everything in the church is established for mission. We pray for healing, we comfort, we exhort, we encourage, we counsel, that we would be a body built up in Christ together, that we would be to minister outward. For brothers and sisters in community groups, places of sharing, of studying, accountability groups, prayer groups, discipleship, book groups, equipping hour, you build each other up in order to build the church up via mission. See your brother or sister as one, locked arm in arm, for the sake of a mission, God’s mission that he has given to his church.
   
   

The message of Scripture is clear. OGC, you are chosen. You are redeemed. You are sent. Always always always sent. Pray with me.